


Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

by Quilljoy



Category: Long Walk - Stephen King
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-17
Updated: 2010-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:59:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quilljoy/pseuds/Quilljoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of high prices and things that aren't quite dead yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dancinbutterfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/gifts).



> Oh boy. This was my own Walk to complete. I hope you enjoy it!  
> Multiple thanks to my beta, Minkhollow, for all the hard work.

Ninety-nine boys have been buried in mahogany caskets this morning. Ray Garraty knows of it because Art Baker sits by the end of his hospital bed and cries.

The rims of Art's eyes are red, and blood and snot run down his nose. He looks thin and pale, as scrawny as the day he was shot down by a soldier. When Garraty reaches out for him, Art backs away and curls over his own body. His bloody feet claw at the linen sheets, and Garraty sees his nails are dark. There are patches of dirt in his hair and clothes - not the ones he has been buried in. It is strange. Garraty can't remember what Art had been wearing at the Walk.

"I'm scared." Art doesn't sound scared at all. He cries like a nail scratching a board, but his voice is as hollow as the side of his head where the soldier had shot him.

There's something to him that doesn't want to look at Art, no matter how much Garraty is glad that he's there. No one came to visit but the Major, and the Major is not company. Art is dead but not gone, and the Major looks as if he's the one who's been away all along. Something changed in Garraty, and now he sees the red glowing under the Major's dark sunglasses.

It's chilly. Garraty moves his head to see if the windows are open.

"You promised me, Garraty," Art moans, voice cut short by sobs that shake his entire body. Garraty wants to do something to stop it but can't; he's failed his friend and there's no going back. "The lead lined coffin. You promised me."

The button near his bed remains untouched, but the nurse comes nonetheless. She heard his cries from the hallway - but Garraty isn't crying.

Garraty brings his arms closer to his chest and shivers. Art has left. It's grown even colder.

***

They caught him a hundred meters from the finishing line, when a soldier crashed into him and they both collapsed. They thought he wouldn't stop. The Major wanted him to go on, of course; he watched Garraty run past him with a frown that turned into a satisfied smile.

"You set a beautiful example for next year's candidates, forty-seven," the Major compliments him once again. There should be pride swelling in his chest, but Garraty is wary of what's hiding behind those lenses now. It's his third or fourth visit this week, and Garraty hasn't seen Art anymore, but he isn't worried. He just thinks of someone he'd like to see again.

The Major doesn't allow Jan or Mother to come visit him. Garraty can't understand how honestly glad he feels about it. He thinks of Stebbins and even Barkovich, and Art makes him remember Scramm. But most of all, he wishes McVries was there.

"Have you thought of your prize yet?"

The Major pushes it. Garraty knows he's thinking of bulbous orange lights and television. The Major has a mind set to pleasing the public. Under his hospital windows, journalists and reporters and cameramen fill all the tiny spaces left by the Crowd, whose mouth hangs open as if to devour him.

Until the preparations for next year start rolling, he'll be their main course.

Garraty rolls his shoulders, giving in.

"Scramm has a wife," he says, and he can tell by the Major's expression that he has a hard time connecting names to numbers, numbers to faces. Each one of those hundred boys is very dear to him for fitting into where he wants them, but number forty-seven still has a spectacle in front of him. Unlike the other boys and the boys before them, he hasn't gone dead or crazy. He could even compete next year. The Major has high hopes for him, he says so.

The Walk hasn't finished for Garraty. Perhaps he will have to keep going forever.

"He left her a baby. I don't really care for the money."

It's going to be a big show.

When the Major leaves this time, Garraty notices that they are not alone. Stebbins is clinging to his father's back. He clutches at the Major's clothes and buries his blond hair against the man's shoulders.

He's going home, Garraty realizes. Finally, his father is taking him into his house.

***

Scramm's wife has tiny eyes, as if a perforator had punched two holes into her face.

Her pale skin gleams under the hot bright light of the reflectors, and she looks just as tired as he does. Her attempts to put on makeup haven't made her look any prettier - the shade of red on her lips and cheeks looks unnatural, her figure is one step away from healthy. When she presses her lips together and forces herself to be on her feet, Garraty remembers a hundred boys all doing the same.

Flashes burst around them when Garraty gives her a cheap piece of paper symbolizing the money. The scene comes right from a dramatic romance, a hero in his hospital bed saving the wife of a fallen comrade. Except he didn't really know Scramm anyway, and he doesn't care - and she doesn't, either, her expression showing nothing but two buttons of eyes, gazing at something far away.

Maybe she's seeing Scramm too, watching her from Garraty's side. His shoulders lift in anticipation of a question left unasked, but he doesn't have the guts.

The camera crew films his hesitation and it's showing on the news tomorrow. Garraty thinks of a couple of stupid headlines and feels he shouldn't have done that, but Scramm is happy, Scramm is thanking him, and then Scramm is gone.

***

Harkness leaves him his worn-out notebook.

It's filled now. When Garraty flips through the pages, he can see names and numbers and causes and times of death. His finger stops by the last page and the last name, but he closes the notebook before "Ray Garraty, 47, Maine's Own" appears completely in his sight.

***

Jan has always been a dream of a distant summer, for when the cramps in his legs and pain in his back died down. Garraty was sure they'd die down real soon, back in the Walk, except he outlasted everyone and now he still hurts all over.

After all the miles he walked for her, it's unfair that he can't get any closer. She is still unreal, even after he leaves the hospital, right leg in a cast, left foot still wrapped in bandages and presences much bigger and painful like a nodule in the back of head. His mother and Jan come running to him, and clutch him so tightly he should be able to feel the same. Life goes on, they're bringing him home - except he can't reach home just yet, not when he has so much left to cross.

Garraty is already back at his house when he sees McVries for the first time.

When McVries sat and died, Stebbins had frantically told Garraty to catch up to his soul. He doesn't know how McVries is able to do it the opposite way, to tangle around him when he is alive and McVries is dead.

He hadn't really realized he was lonely until McVries showed up.

"Were you… Are you upset?" Garraty says. "Might have shown earlier."

McVries looks at him, and the scar in his face distorts his smile.

"No… Better you than Stebbins, right?"

Garraty doesn't know how to follow. He can't really say to Pete that none of them has been quite so responsive yet. Art cries a lot whenever he shows up and Garraty just feels so guilty - but Garraty hasn't been feeling a lot of things lately, so he figures at least it's something good. And there's Stebbins. It always takes the Major for him to appear because Stebbins is still clutching at his father, seeking recognition, but how could he wish for that when he doesn't even acknowledge Garraty?

"So you're sticking with me, then?"

McVries shrugs. He walks through his room as if Garraty has invited him there - he might as well have. What they went through would definitely earn an inivitation had McVries been alive, but then, Garraty doesn't think they'd have been as close if Garraty wasn't half dead either.

"Isn't it strange?" McVries asks suddenly, turning his head so fast Garraty expects to hear a snap. "That you're closer to my wish than I am?"

"No," Garraty ponders. At least he's got McVries now. This is turning out better than expected. "Not really."

***

Garraty learns how to move on.

He's still bedridden, but there are guests who make him better - and even when they don't, they're still better than his former school friends, who are now as amorphous and faceless as the Crowd, whom he still dreams of sometimes.

Jan also visits frequently. Garraty tries to welcome her, he really does, but it's as hard as the Walk itself. Jan is full of something he can't dream of touching, even when Jan allows him to, leaning against his body and giving him chaste kisses Garraty accepts, but doesn't taste. It isn't disappointment. Her mouth and smile are still the same he dreamed of having if he finished the course. The trouble is - there's no finish line to the Walk.

McVries keeps by his side even then, like he's always done, as if he could make things easier. It's just as easy to snap at him, because he won't be going away either. Garraty knows what it takes to be gone; they just haven't reached this point yet.

"Shouldn't you be somewhere else?" He says once, just because he can. McVries just stares back at him as if he doesn't understand.

"Well, shouldn't you?"

McVries wouldn't have lasted in the Walk for so long had he not been so stubborn. He crosses his arms and leans on the wall, glaring at Garraty even when Jan lies between his arms. There's jealousy in his eyes, not because Garraty has a girlfriend, but because what he knows about love ends with a girl tearing the skin off his face. Garraty would like him to understand, but then, he can't reach Jan either, and he's starting to doubt any feelings but what he experienced at the Walk. There's the need to keep moving, and if Garraty stopped for McVries once, now he won't.

He holds Jan closer as if it has the power to make it better, but it doesn't and Garraty knows that Pete is right.

Jan pulls Garraty out of his daze by calling him. McVries disappears as soon as he blinks, and then she says "What's that?", forcing Garraty to look down.

There is something in his leg growing black under the bandages. Spreading from the cast there's only darkness, crawling up to his knee. Garraty realizes that, just like his friends, he's starting to rot.

When they get to the hospital - they ought to have arrived earlier because it should be hurting, it should feel like being eaten alive because that's what's happening to him, except he's numb to everything but the other darkness following his steps - the doctor explains it's started by an infection and prompts him to surgery immediately. Garraty doesn't listen. He knows it isn't from the hospital; it isn't even due to the Walk and the days he's gone without shoes.

It's them.

Garraty holds no grudge, but a boy's hand. He's sedated and goes to sleep, yet he feels him, the entire time. The boy who lost his feet under a half-track stays by his side and doesn't let go.

When he wakes up, the boy is still there, where his right foot should've been. The doctor is by his side and Garraty reminds him of the Walk and of the boy.

"That was a good one," the man says, like he counted all the kills. Garraty wonders if they all did, the others, wonders if they picked one they found the best.

***

Garraty feels as if he's the shadows of something past. The ghost image left by an old film projector, action and motion contained in themselves, repeating in a neverending cycle. Just like in a movie theater, his mother and Jan look at him, but their feelings don't come through. Garraty impacts them, but he's left unaffected. They say he's gone cold and distant, and Garraty knows it's the truth. They also say he'll get better, and Garraty knows he won't. He's already better than anyone could have imagined.

Garraty doesn't need them anymore.

He has better friends.


End file.
